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No Electricity Bill in 20 Years

5 Jul

No Electricity Bill in 20 Years

Posted on Jul 5, 2016
by Sarah Wilkinson

Electricity bill free for 20 years!

The loss for her supplier would equate to a whopping £10 000 after somehow ‘slipping through the system’ in the 1990’s when her house was incorrectly marked down as having been disconnected. Carol Kellar sent her confusion across in an email to The Guardian, which left them intrigued and interested to find out more. It is promising that she would have been supplied by Norweb, the company was bought by North West Water in 1995 – the two companies came together to become United Utilities as we know it today. The customer base was sold to E.ON in 2002, Powergen at the time, while a company called Electricity North West owns and operates the regions electricity distribution network after buying it from United Utilities in 2007. After further investigation, it was found that Kellar’s MPAN had been disconnected in 2003. This seems to be apparent because information was received from the supplier stating that there was no activity on the meter meaning, it wasn’t being used.

source: The Guardian

If, like Carol, you haven’t received an electricity bill in a while then the below applies to you.

If you are in this minority, there’s a chance you won’t have to pay for all the energy you/your business has consumed. By rights, your supplier is only obliged to charge you for a maximum of 12 months of energy us, if it has been over tear since you last received an electricity bill – this information is found under the ‘back billing code’.

However, life as we know isn’t all plain sailing… for the above to apply to you then the following is important:

You must have already contacted your supplier and asked for a bill to be sent

Co-operated with any requests from your supplier e.g. letting them visit your home to read your meter.

In other words:

You haven’t received an electricity bill in over 2 years, you call your supplier and ask them to send you a bill. You give them a meter reading. Next, await the arrival of your requested bill, you receive this to find they have charged you for 2 years’ worth of energy use. You respond with a letter stating that you are aware of the ‘back billing code’ and that you need only to pay for 1 year of energy use. Your supplier sends you a new bill – this time with the correct figures.

It may be apparent that you can’t afford you pay your sky high bill which you have not been charged for over the previous months then you can request a payment plan from your supplier. For example, if it has been 13 months since your last payment/bill then your supplier could split your payment to be paid over a 13 month period.

Source: Citizen’s Advice

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D-ENERGi have started to roll out smart meters to its valuable portfolio of customers. By the end of 2020, around 50 million smart meters will be fitted in over 26 million households across Wales, Scotland and England. This is the biggest national infrastructure project of our lifetimes. D-ENERGi are planning to switch all of its customers to smart metering by end of September 2015. This is a whopping 5 years ahead of any of the big six are expected to complete their national rollout of smart meters.

Fossil fuels as we most commonly know them are coal, oil and natural gas. Oil and natural gas are namely known for being located in underground reservoirs but they can also be found in other locations such as shale gas and tar sands. Previously these were considered to be too costly to excavate and make them commercially viable, it is only thanks to the advancements made over the last ten years in drilling technology that these can now be accessed and sold at a profit.
As with many countries Britain is a source of shale gas but this is an as yet untapped resource and yet one that is understandably becoming more and more appealing to businesses and the government. The North Sea oil rig is one of the main contributors to the British Economy and quite often the economy rises and falls with the output of these oil fields; the economy shrank by 0.3% in the final quarter of 2012 because of declining gas and oil output.
“Shale gas could be a new North Sea for Britain, creating tens of thousands of jobs, supporting our manufacturers and reducing gas imports.”
The above statement was made by Corin Taylor, Senior Economic Adviser and author of a new report from the IoD regarding the potential impact of frakking for shale gas on the British economy. Such statements will undoubtedly incite excitement in a government that is looking for an immediate solution to their fiscal woes.
The report cited government figures that estimate 76% of the UK’s gas would be imported by 2030 the cost of which would be around £15.6bn. per year. However, according to this report, if shale gas were to be aggressively pursued gas imports would be reduced to around 37% by 2030 at a total cost of around £7.5bn. per year.
The above figures are clearly an encouraging incentive and shale gas has been somewhat of a revolutionary natural resource in countries that have found themselves with an abundance of it. The two most hotly discussed examples can be found in Northern America. The USA is hoping to be nearly entirely self sufficient regarding energy thanks to their vast reserves of shale gas and Canada is looking for a major boom to it’s economy thanks to their recently discovered tar sands, also known as oil sands. However, what on the surface appears to be the answer to all our looming fears over the future of global energy production could potentially force climate change into an irreversible state.
The process by which shale gas is extracted is called ‘frakking’ and involves drilling a well to the depth at which the shale rock sits and then blasting the rock with water and chemicals. As the water and chemicals produce fissures in the rock natural gas is released and can subsequently be siphoned off and used as energy. One of the most commonly cited issues with frakking is that the chemicals used in the process can contaminate local water suppliers as only 50-70% of surplus water is recovered. However, these figures are regularly disputed and though there are examples of this, such as in Pennsylvania as outlined in this study, they appear to be isolated incidents and are yet to be corroborated by other communities located near frakking sites.
There are obvious benefits to excavating the shale gas resources, the economic boost alone is incredibly appealing, but surely this can only be seen as a desperate attempt to hold onto a system that will ultimately fail us. These resources can only ever be finite, and whilst they are available to be used their use will ultimately push climate change to such a degree that there is no stopping it and certainly no returning from it. We should see the dwindling supply of fossil fuels as a reason to pursue something new, to invest in renewable energy solutions that could potentially reverse the devastating impact that carbon emissions have had.